


trapped and I'm lacking sleep (can you hold on to me?)

by acetheticallyy (jacquesdernier)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nightmares, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 18:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5835463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquesdernier/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It gets easier, a little, over time. You breathe a little lighter, your heart gets stronger. It is better when time has allowed the memory to fade into dull sepia tones. Better, still, when there is something brighter to break it all up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trapped and I'm lacking sleep (can you hold on to me?)

**Author's Note:**

> my very first stormpilot fic! yay!! just a few things before we start:
> 
> 1\. there is a slight slight warning about torture but it is only mentioned vaguely and in passing and it does not go into any detail whatsoever
> 
> 2\. the title of this fic is from two songs that I was listening to at the time of its conception and those are "the man" by ed sheeran and "pieces" by rob thomas (the actual inspiration came more so from the rob thomas song but that's not important)
> 
> 3\. this has, unfortunately, not been properly edited so all spelling errors are entirely my fault and they will be fixed in time
> 
> 4\. a big shout out to my buddy robin who graciously acted as my test subject for this fic and did not complain about my own complaining when I got stuck and stumbled a little

Nights were the hardest. Nights were when your mind opened up and swallowed you whole, taking you prisoner for as long as it wanted. You were never sure how long it did last, exactly, but to you it felt like an eternity had passed. The dark stretched on forever, without end, reaching into your heart with inky black tendrils and squeezing it tight enough to bruise, tight enough to make your lungs constrict and shrivel up beneath your ribcage. It wouldn't let you go. It didn't want to. And so you were doomed, for as long as it remained, to be held captive by its malignance.

It gets easier, a little, over time. You breathe a little lighter, your heart gets stronger. It still hurts, it's still there. It never quite stops being  _hard_ , it will never stop being hard, you think, but it at least gets  _better_. It is better when time has allowed the memory to fade into dull sepia tones, into the grainy black and white pictures of technology ages old and long since defunct. Better, still, when there is something brighter to break it up, a supernova of pure light and innocence, brought about in the form of gentle hands and strong fingers that skim across your shoulders and cut through the monotony of the heartache, causing the dark to shrink away and loosen its grip on your chest.

You were stupid about it, at first; didn't want those strong, gentle hands to know what you were really like, to understand that the inside of your head was a jumbled up mess of fear and despair, cracks lining the foundation of your mind, split apart in the places where someone forced their way in and pried you open. It was prideful, you supposed, only wanting those hands,  _his_ hands, to see the very best pieces of yourself. The part of you that stood tall and walked with an air of importance, like you didn't have a care at all in the world what happened to you, because you were the best and everyone knows that the best doesn't get scared, the best isn't  _allowed_ to wallow in its own pool of melancholy.

You never wanted him to know, he wasn't supposed to know. It was never the plan to let him see you, like this, choking on your own breath in the middle of the night when the stars were high in the sky and everybody else was sound asleep, not at all concerned with the monsters that strangled you in your sleep. It was the way it should have remained, the way you wanted it to remain, but it didn't. And as much as you hated it initially, him seeing you like this, shaking you gently awake when your screams broke the fragile night air, you were and would forever remain grateful that he pushed his way in, so much warmer and so much softer than the dark, gnarled hands that invaded your soul before.

Because it gave you solace. You found peace, however fleetingly, in the intricate roadmaps he traced on your skin, in the sharp angles of the constellations that he created from your freckles. In the dead of night, while you were plagued by your worst fears and thoughts and conspiracies, he brought you out of it. It was relentless, in a way, the way he decided to help you by all means necessary, no questions asked, as if he personally had taken a sworn oath to protect you from yourself.

The first time it happened—the first time he was present for it at least, certainly not the first time it had happened, period—there was no hesitation on his end. He acted without thinking, without tensing up and panicking or wonder why in the hell those ungodly sobs were being ripped from your throat, like you had the first time (the  _real_ first time). It was effortless, the way it happened. It seemed that no later had you begun to turn and groan was he there, next to you, curling one strong, capable hand around your shoulder and pulling you to the surface. For a moment, you clung to him. But only for a moment.

In that first moment of consciousness, you reacted on impulse and pulled him towards you, close enough to see your haggard self reflected in his eyes, and then closer still, until he was lying beside you on the mattress and you had your face buried in his collarbone. But then, slowly, one by one, you regained control of your mental faculties. You remembered were you were,  _who_ you were, who  _he_ was, and you made to pull back, but he held you fast and steady with one hand on the small of your back and the other curled gently in the matted strands of your hair. You decided not to try and fight it. It was nice and you were weak and so you stayed there, eyes shut tight against his skin, marking the moments with the steady beating of his heart and using the slow rise and fall of his chest to calm your own breath.

You didn't speak, and neither did he. He just laid there and waited for your muscles to relax and for your breathing to return to its normal rhythm and for your mind to finally be still enough to fall asleep once more. And in the morning, when you awoke, eyes burning with tears previously shed but otherwise feeling like you had finally slept for the first time in years, you still didn't talk about it. You woke up warm and protected, strong arms bracketing you in against his body, but you didn't feel any less ashamed. And perhaps he knew that, either by experience or intuition, because he merely loosened his grip and allowed you to set your own pace as to how you wanted the morning to proceed. You allowed yourself time to breathe before you pushed yourself back and gave him a small, thankful smile. The best part, the amazing part, was that when the morning had passed and time progressed into the afternoon, you saw each other in the base mess hall and it was as if the previous night had never happened.

He didn't look at you with pity in his eyes like you thought he would, he didn't try to bring it up...he acted like nothing had changed. And, you supposed, nothing  _had_ changed. You were still friends, you still told each other ridiculous jokes and laughed when the other groaned, you were still there for each other. The only difference was that you knew each other better. The only difference was that you had nightmares and he knew about them and he tried to help you forget them.

And as time went on, it got easier. You would never truly get over being violated like that, the wholes in your mind would never be  _fixed_ , but it got easier to stop focusing on it so much. It got easier to let him help you. As time progressed, you became less and less reluctant to let him see you like that. It was a relief to allow yourself that much, to allow yourself to not be the strong one for once and just accept his help.

It was like he knew. And, you supposed, he probably did. You figured he had to have at least some experience with this, where he was from. You figured he probably spent enough nights wanting to wake up screaming, stopping himself just before he could, because where he came from, you didn't have feelings. Where he came from, he was a machine, programmed to do one thing and one thing only, and he was sent back for repairs when they found a bug in his code. His quick, sure movements convinced you, and the instinct to resist gradually faded. You had been raised to resist, just like you resisted the First Order, just like the people before you resisted the Empire and the Sith. But those, they were all bad things. And Finn, well...he was anything  _but_ bad. There was no sense in resisting things that were good for you.

Finn was pure, radiant light, a street lamp on the side of an empty road at dusk, the North star shining brightly in the sky, calling you home when you were lost and weary and worse for the wear. There was not a thing in the galaxy, in the entire universe that could not be improved simply because he had touched it or cared for it, yourself included.

Eventually, the whole thing came to you as naturally as flying. The motions were easy, reliable, you didn't have to thin about it. Whenever you woke up in a cold sweat, he was right there next to you, waiting. And you didn't hesitate, not anymore. You simply let him pull you close and hold your mind together in the places where they were coming apart at the seams.


End file.
